Latest news with #government
South China Morning Post
2 hours ago
- Politics
- South China Morning Post
South Korea tries a different tack to sway its nuclear-armed neighbour: an olive branch
On a day heavy with memory, South Korea 's President Lee Jae-myung invoked the language of peace, urging restraint and dialogue even as the nuclear-armed North forges deeper ties with Russia and the Korean peninsula bristles with tension. 'The surest way to secure our safety is to build peace – peace so strong that there is no need to fight,' Lee said in a solemn social media post, commemorating the 75th anniversary of the onset of the Korean war. The conflict from 1950–53 left millions dead and ended with an armistice, but no peace treaty. 'The era of relying solely on military strength to defend the country is over,' Lee wrote in his post. 'It is better to win without war than to win through war.' His message was more than just rhetoric. In recent weeks, Lee's newly formed government has moved to recalibrate the peninsula's dangerous status quo, seeking to nudge North Korea from confrontation to conversation, even as the spectre of conflict looms larger than at any time in recent memory. A North Korean soldier stands guard in a watchtower next to a giant loudspeaker (right) near the demilitarised zone dividing the two Koreas on June 12. Photo: AFP In a gesture laden with symbolism, Seoul this month halted its loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts along the border – the first such move in a year. Within hours, Pyongyang reciprocated, silencing its own speakers.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Equities Rise Intraday as US, China Confirm Trade Deal Details; Nike Jumps
US benchmark equity indexes were higher intraday as Washington and China confirmed details of a trad
Fox News
2 hours ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Oversight chair demands Jean-Pierre, other former WH staff testify on alleged Biden mental decline coverup
An influential House committee is demanding that former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and three other former top White House staffers appear before Congress to testify about the alleged cover-up of former President Joe Biden's mental decline. Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has been on the hunt for who was making decisions in Biden's inner circle during the president's apparent mental decline. On Friday, he sent letters to Karine-Pierre and former White House chief of staff Jeff Zients, former senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates and former special assistant to the president Ian Sams, demanding they present themselves for transcribed interviews with the oversight committee. The letters are part of the committee's ongoing investigation into the alleged attempted cover-up of Biden's decline and the potentially unauthorized issuance of sweeping pardons and other executive actions by senior White House officials usurping Biden's presidential authority. In his letters, Comer says the committee believes that the four top Biden staffers have "critical" information on "who made key decisions and exercised the powers of the executive branch during the previous administration, possibly without former President Biden's consent." The letter to Jean-Pierre stated that as White House press secretary and a top Biden confidante, "you were not only near the president daily, but you were 'alongside the ranks of the president's top confidantes.'" "Your assertion, on multiple occasions, that President Biden's decline was attributable to such tactics as 'cheap fakes' or 'misinformation' cannot go without investigation," wrote Comer. He said that "if White House staff carried out a strategy lasting months or even years to hide the chief executive's condition — or to perform his duties — Congress may need to consider a legislative response." Comer set interview dates in late August and early September and gave the four senior officials until July 4 to confirm they would comply with the demands voluntarily or if they will "require a subpoena to compel your attendance for a deposition." Jean-Pierre, Zients, Bates and Sams are the latest former Biden senior officials to receive a congressional summons from Comer as part of the Oversight Committee's investigation into the alleged cover-up. The chairman also issued subpoenas to Dr. Kevin O'Connor, Biden's physician, and Anthony Bernal, former assistant to the president and senior advisor to the first lady, after they refused to appear before the committee voluntarily. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Comer said that "as part of our aggressive investigation into the cover-up of his cognitive decline and potentially unauthorized executive actions, we must hear from those who aided and abetted this farce." "President Biden's inner circle repeatedly told the American people that he was 'sharp as ever,' dismissing any commentary about his obvious mental decline as 'gratuitous,'" he said. "They fed these false talking points to progressive allies and the media, who helped perpetuate that President Biden was fit to serve." Jean-Pierre, Zients, Bates and Sams did not reply to Fox News Digital's request for comment before publication.
BBC News
2 hours ago
- Business
- BBC News
Benefits U-turn raises questions about Labour's long-term plan
About a quarter of the working age population - those aged 16 to 64 - do not currently have a job. Caring responsibilities and ill health are the most common reasons given by those who would like a four-year mandate and a towering majority, Labour might have been expected to have invested in a long-term plan to help those who are sick get back into the workforce, at least part-time. It may have cost up front, but in the future it could have delivered big its determination to avoid a repeat of the Liz Truss mini-budget led them to target big savings quickly - but it ended up causing perhaps even more trouble, with the government performing a spectacular U-turn to avoid a mass Labour raises significant questions, not just about how this year-old government manages its affairs day to day, but if its overall strategy to renew the country is on track. Long-term reform vs short-term savings The government was adamant that its "welfare reform" changes - announced in March's Green Paper - were designed to get people back to bulk of planned savings came from tightening the eligibility for Personal Independence Payments (Pip), which are paid to support people who face extra costs due to disability, regardless of whether or not they are in work. Independent experts questioned whether more of the savings should have been redeployed to help people with ill health ease back in to the workforce, for example part time. That could mean support such as potential employer subsidies - especially to help get younger people into work and pay taxes, rather than claim benefits long term. It could also help fill jobs - a win win for rebels argued that the upfront cuts were aimed at filling a Budget hole against the Chancellor's self imposed borrowing rules. Their central criticism was that this was an emergency cost-cutting is true that the Chancellor's Budget numbers were blown off course by higher borrowing costs, such as those emanating from US President Donald Trump's shock tariffs, so she bridged the borrowing gap with these cuts. The welfare reform plan to save £5bn a year by 2029-30 helped Chancellor Rachel Reeves meet her "non negotiable" borrowing rules. Indeed when the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which monitors the spending plans, said they would not in fact raise enough money, Reeves announced more welfare cuts on the day of the Spring main point was to raise money to help close the gap in the Budget tell me that the welfare reform plan was in fact brought forward for this purpose. But this was still not a full programme of welfare reform designed to deal with a structural issue of rising health-related claims. 'Top slicing never works' The former Conservative Welfare Secretary Iain Duncan Smith resigned as work and pensions secretary almost ten years ago, saying a similar plan to cut disability benefits was "indefensible".He says the cuts should have formed part of "a wider process" of finding the best way to focus resources on those most in need."Top slicing never works," he says of plans to extract savings from the welfare budget without its heart the problem is perceived to be that the current welfare structure has become overly binary, failing to accommodate a growing demographic who should be able to do at least a bit of work. This rigidity - what ministers refer to as a "hard boundary" - inadvertently pushes individuals towards declaring complete unfitness for work, and can lead to total dependence on welfare, particularly universal credit health (UC Health), rather than facilitating a gradual transition back into some leading experts this is, in fact, the biggest cause of the increase in health-related welfare claims. The pandemic may have accelerated the trend, but it started a decade proportion of working age people claiming incapacity benefit had fallen well below 5% in 2015, now it's 7%.The pandemic period exacerbated the rise as ill health rose and many claims were agreed without face-to-face meetings. These claims were also increasingly related to mental ill health. One former minister, who did not wanted to be named, said the system had effectively broken down."The real trouble is people are learning to game the Pip questionnaire with help from internet sites," he says. "It's pretty straightforward to answer the questions in a way that gets the points."As he puts it, the UK is "at the extreme of paying people for being disabled" with people getting money rather than equipment such as wheelchairs as occurs in other most kinds of mental ill health, in kind support, such as therapies, would make more sense than cash transfers, he some disability campaigners have said that being offered vouchers instead of cash payments and thereby removing people's automony over spending, is "an insult" and "dangerous". These pressures can be seen in the nature of the compromise planned cuts to Pip payments will now only apply to new claimants from November next year, sparing 370,000 current claimants out of the 800,000 expected to be affected by the Meg Hillier, Labour MP and chair of the Commons Treasury committee, along with other rebels, have also pointed out that the application of the new four-point threshold for Pip payments will be designed together with disability is a fair assumption that this so called "co-production" may enable more future claimants to retain this universal credit, the government had planned to freeze the higher rate for existing health-related claimants but the payments will now rise in line with inflation. And for future claimants of universal credit, the most severe cases will be spared from a planned halving of the payments, worth an average of £3,000 per these calculations don't take into account the effects of £1bn the government has pulled forward to spend to help those with disabilities and long-term health conditions find work as swiftly as possible. This originally wasn't due to come in until 2029. This change does help Labour's argument that the changes are about reform rather than cost cutting. But this is still not fully fledged radical reform on the scale that is needed to tackle a social, fiscal and economic crisis. The OBR has not yet done the Keep Britain Working review, led by former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield, which was commissioned by the government to look into the role of employers in health and disability, has not yet been the Netherlands, where a similar challenge was tackled two decades ago, their system makes employers responsible for the costs of helping people back into work for the first two businesses are concerned about the costs of tax, wages and employment rights policies. And there is already a fundamental question about whether the jobs are out there to support sick workers back into the workforce. Tax rises or other spending cuts The Institute for Fiscal Studies and Resolution Foundation think tanks have estimated the government's U-turn could cost £3bn, meaning Chancellor Rachel Reeves will either have to increase taxes in the autumn budget or cut spending elsewhere if she is to meet her self-imposed spending the income tax threshold freeze again, seems a plausible plan There are still a few months to go, so the Treasury might hope that growth is sustained and that borrowing costs settle, helping with the OBR numbers. It will not be lost on anyone that the precise cause of all this, however, was a hasty effort to try to bridge this same Budget rule maths gap that emerged in questions arise about just how stability and credibility-enhancing it really is to tweak fiscal plans every six months to hit Budget targets that change due to market conditions, with changes that cannot be ultimately idea floated by the International Monetary Fund that these Budget adjustments are only really needed once a year must seem quite attractive today. Is Britain getting sicker? And then there are bigger questions left Britain really fundamentally sicker than it was a decade ago, and if it is, does society want to continue current levels of support? If the best medicine really is work, as some suggest, then can employers cope, and will there be enough jobs?Or was it the system itself - previous welfare cuts - that caused the ramp up in claims in recent years, requiring a more thought-through type of reform? Should support for disability designed to help with the specific costs of physical challenges be required at similar levels by those with depression or anxiety?Dare this government make further changes to welfare? And, in pursuing narrow Budget credibility, has it lost more political credibility without actually being able to pass its plans into law?The government is not just boxed in. It seems to have created one of those magician's tricks where they handcuff themselves behind their backs in a locked box - only they lack the escape skills of a Houdini or will be relief that the markets are calm for now, with sterling and stock markets at multi-year highs. But an effort to close a Budget gap, has ended up with perhaps even more fundamental questions about how and if the government can get things done. BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
South China Morning Post
3 hours ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Every effort must be made by Hong Kong authorities to deliver flats on time
The urgent need to provide more public housing, to free tens of thousands of people from long waits in substandard accommodation, has long been recognised in Hong Kong and remains a priority. So the sudden suspension of a development intended to provide 8,300 flats is always going to raise eyebrows. Advertisement The Housing Bureau has confirmed that plans to build eight residential towers in Fanling have temporarily been put on hold. This follows an investigation revealing the 'complex geology' of the site, which would cause construction costs to soar by 60 to 90 per cent and take 10 months longer than expected. The bedrock drops more than 80 metres below ground, 120 metres at its deepest. This would make the foundation work much more expensive. It has, therefore, been decided to prioritise other 'more cost-effective' housing projects in the area. The decision is a pragmatic one given the circumstances. There must be no let-up in efforts to provide public housing, but the costs need to be kept under control. Crucially, the suspension will not stop the government meeting the target of 308,000 public housing units in the next 10 years. Other projects in the area are to be expedited to make up for the loss of the 8,300 flats and the bureau says it has not abandoned the project. Advertisement But legitimate questions are being asked about the suspension. The draft outline zoning plan was approved in December 2022. At the time, no insurmountable technical problems were found.
